


last words

by Hugabug



Category: Heneral Luna (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, M/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-10
Updated: 2016-03-10
Packaged: 2018-05-25 22:16:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6212296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hugabug/pseuds/Hugabug
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(in a universe where you're born with your soulmate's last words printed across your skin, you live your entire life wary of every second.</p>
<p>until you slip up.</p>
<p>and then it's too late.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	last words

You’re in a hospital with your boyfriend. The partner you are sure is the one. He’s sick and weak, but the doctor said, given ample time, he’d make it. You’ve got a hopeful future with him and you believe in it wholeheartedly. 

But right now, you’re hungry. You haven’t eaten since lunch time and it’s already eleven o'clock in the evening. You don’t want to leave him, he needs you here! However, he looks well enough. In fact, he looks encouraging when he hears your stomach grumble even more. You need to go eat. You’d be no use to him when your own health is run rugged into the ground.

So you get up, out of your uncomfortable chair and you move to kiss him on the forehead, muttering a very simple reassurance: “‘Wag ka magalala, mahal. Babalik rin ako.”

And he mumbles something in return. Also very simple, but something unintelligible. “m … ha… na… hal… ki…”

You raise a brow, but you smile nonetheless. “Ha?”

“m… l… ki…”

“… _Maharlika_?”

Your partner gives a small shake of his head. But he smiles.

You smile as well, confused. “Hindi kita maintindihan.”

It doesn’t surprise you, really. He hasn’t been able to spare any energy for properly formed words as of late. It’s no use asking him to say it again, it will take ages to decipher. Besides, he’s already 

pushing you gently, a concerned look in his half-lidded eyes. Your stomach is grumbling louder now, he can hear it. And he wants you to eat.

With one more kiss on the forehead, you smile at him and you head out, alerting the nurse at the desk of your whereabouts before you take the elevator down to the cafeteria. There, you have a nice meal of bland, rather tasteless food. You don’t particularly like it, but it’s food nonetheless. Your pace is leisurely. There is no worry on your mind and no tension in your shoulders. It’s a good dinner.

About ten minutes later, you want to throw it up.

You’re standing in the hall as doctors and nurses bustle in and out of his room. The continous _beeeeeeeeeepp_ of his heart monitor rings in your ears and you’re finding it hard to breathe. In your mind there is a mantra, one unbreakable stream of thought:   _he was fine awhile ago he’s fine now this is nothing this is just an episode he’s fine he’s just fine_.

But somehow, the hopeful future you had believed in no longer held a place in your heart.

It takes the doctors a full hour before they finally give up. They can’t do anything anymore. 

He’s gone.

It’s even written on paper.

And that’s what you stare at when you visit the morgue to sign some papers. His name on a sheet of thin paper with his date of death right next to it. In fact, it’s the only thing pushing you to sign each and every legal page. It serves as a reminder, you think. A solid and cruel reminder that it’s over now. He’s gone. You need to let go.

But you can’t.

So you stare. You stare at the dull brown manila envelope in your hands. You stare at the sterile white walls of the funeral parlor lobby. You stare at the numerous bouquets ironically blooming with life. You stare. At everything.

Except at yourself.

The neat little words printed on the broad flank of your right arm don’t burn like the way the stories of old described… but they don’t settle either. They itch and they tickle like a whole army of ants making their way under the layers of your clothing and your skin. It’s a constant feeling, one that clouds your mind and fills your hands with the need to scratch—

You ignore it and you think you’re ignoring it rather well. You have felt this before, through every bad break up and every friendship so carelessly tossed aside. You’ve been through this all before. It’s nothing new, nothing to be concerned about. It will go away.

But–

A quiet voice pulls you out of your reverie and you gladly welcome the intrusion. It’s the secretary calling you into the morgue. The mortician has a question.

You follow her down the cold hallways.

“I fixed him up the best I could.”

The mortician smiles, forced, clearly trying for a more jovial atmosphere. You only stare at the open casket in reply.

“He looks like he’s sleeping.” you say.

The morticians smile disappears and she looks away.

“I’m sorry, sir.” she says.

You shake your head. “What is it?”

“Oh! Sorry. Um. I just wanted to ask, very quick.” the mortician fetches a clip board and flips a few pages. “About his mark–”

You freeze. “I’ve never seen his mark.”

“Never?”

His mark had been on his back, and he’d been adamant that it be kept hidden. You complied, of course. How could you not?

You shake your head. “Never.”

“Well, um–” the mortician looks away again to ruffle pages with well practiced fingers. She’s flipping page after page until finally, she reaches the one she wants and she gingerly removes it from its clip.

“You are Mr. Hernando’s boyfriend, yes?”

You swallow thickly and nod. “Yes.”

“Well…Um. Mr. Roman, one of my associates who helped prepare him took note of his mark yesterday. See, there’s a protocol, sir. We need to write every mark down, you know? For the records. Well, in Mr. Hernando’s case, we had to take a picture. Ang liit, eh–”

She hands you the picture. 

And you begin to shake.

Because across broad shoulders and a smooth back sit three simple words, all in Filipino, all in a tiny cursive you’ve seen on all your college notebooks and official contracts and letters and the little post it notes you used to put around his bedroom when he wasn’t particularly feeling well–

You shake, because the buzzing in your right arm is not longer buzzing. It’s an acute pain, now. One that travels like a sharp knife through your skin, a clean-cut slice as it carves nine neat letters into the very fiber of your being.

You shake, because in the picture, in your meticulous hand writing and on the tanned expanse of your Joven’s back, it reads: _Hindi kita maintindihan_.

And on the flank of your right arm, fading fading _fading_  into multiple scars that you know you will bear for the rest of your life, are the sweet last words:

_Mahal kita_.


End file.
